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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26933404">But Don't You Remember?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders'>UniverseOnHerShoulders</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Take Me To The Stars [43]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Doctor Who (2005)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, F/F, Revenge</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 03:02:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,713</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26933404</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Furious and betrayed, Clara vows revenge on a former friend. The Doctor is there to remind her of the words Clara left her with on Trap Street, but will Clara heed her own advice?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Thirteenth Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Take Me To The Stars [43]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1139201</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>But Don't You Remember?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>From the prompt:</p><p>
  <em>Clara wants revenge on someone for doing her wrong, the Doctor reminds her of what she said to him before she died. The control freak in Clara wants to do it anyway but would the Doctor be willing to help her?</em>
</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I cannot <em>believe </em>him,” Clara fumes, slamming the door of the diner so hard behind her that the glass rattles, threatening to smash. It narrowly misses hitting the Doctor in the face; as it is, her hands manage to save it from taking her nose off, and she pushes open the door and follows Clara inside, letting the door fall gently shut again with an irrational, silent apology for its mistreatment at the hands of her partner. “The bloody… that <em>bastard…</em>”</p><p>The Doctor leans against the counter as Clara stomps from booth to booth, thumping the leather upholstery with her fists. She doesn’t say anything; she simply watches as Clara’s anger manifests physically, and the booths bear the brunt of her fury, silent and immovable; the victims of her anger over a scheme they’d been planning for months and which had failed spectacularly a few hours previously. Reaching over the counter, the Doctor retrieves the tub of glacé cherries that Clara uses to top milkshakes and twists the lid off, before idly popping two or three into her mouth and chewing slowly as Clara continues to rage.</p><p>“How dare he?” Clara asks, but the Doctor knows that she doesn’t expect or require an answer. The question is largely – but not entirely – rhetorical, and Clara lets out a frustrated scream, smashing both of her fists down onto the back of a seat with absolute rage. The Doctor remains silent, shoving another couple of cherries in her mouth, trying to judge when it would be safest to speak. “After all the work we did for Kacper… all the shitty things we did… how dare he betray me like that? How dare he do that to me?”</p><p>She holds up her hands, letting the sleeves of her jacket fall back, and the Doctor inwardly winces as the raw, damaged skin around Clara’s wrists is exposed. Two inches wide, the identical patches match the cuffs that she’d been clapped in until an hour ago, and even though the Doctor knows that the damage will fade in another couple of hours – the enduring legacy of Clara’s time-stopped cells – it’s still painful to look at the injuries. Worse, the skin of Clara’s hands is reddening too now, as though leaching colour from the banquettes she’s still assaulting in her anger, and the Doctor flinches as Clara aims a kick at the chrome bottom of one where it meets the floor.</p><p>“<em>Bastard</em>, telling us he trusted us; telling me he was going to make me his bride and then selling me to Lord Frenzlo to take to the auction…”</p><p>“You didn’t want to be his bride,” the Doctor points out, holding a cherry on the inside of her cheek as she speaks. “Nor did I.”</p><p>“That’s not the <em>point</em>,” Clara rages, kicking at the chrome again, and the Doctor chews and swallows the cherry. “The point is, I had him where I wanted him and he double-crossed me.”</p><p>“Us.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“<em>Us</em>. It was our-”</p><p>“Don’t bloody start on semantics with me,” Clara snarls, and even though the Doctor knows that her anger is not directed at her personally; that is merely a side effect of the treachery of Kacper of Rhyx; it stings to be on the receiving end of Clara’s temper, intentionally or not. “<em>You</em> weren’t the one in chains.”</p><p>“No,” the Doctor says levelly, as Clara kicks at the chrome for the third time, misjudges the angle and the force, and lets out a yelp of agony, clutching her toe with one hand and hopping on the spot. “I wasn’t.”</p><p>“So, you can’t-” Clara breaks off, sinking onto the banquette she had previously been kicking and grimacing before thwacking the leather again with renewed vigour, as though punishing it for her own transgression. “…shit, ow. You can’t tell me-”</p><p>“No, I can’t tell you anything about suffering. I was just the one who had to lead you to the slave market for Frenzlo and leave you there, terrified that you were going to be… that you might be… that someone would…” the Doctor begins coolly, but her voice cracks and her hands tremble on the jar of cherries. She turns away from Clara and sets it down on the countertop, hunching her shoulders as she leans forward and puts her head in her hands, taking long, steadying breaths and trying to think about anything other than the abject terror that had swirled through her mind as she’d had to look Clara in the eyes and leave her behind in the futuristic amphitheatre in which beings of all races were bartered and sold.</p><p>Guilt and self-loathing wells in her chest, hot and uncomfortable, as she remembers each heavy, tortuous step she’d had to take back to the palace, and the smile she’d had to force as she’d reported back to Kacper, playing the part of the dutiful right-hand woman. She puts her hands over her eyes, pressing down with the heels of her palms until colours and patterns pop behind her eyelids, and when a hand settles on her shoulder she jumps so hard that she knocks the jar of cherries to the floor, where it shatters into myriad tiny pieces, the bright fruits bouncing every which way.</p><p>“Oh, bugger,” she mutters, looking down at the mess, and it’s then that she finally processes that the hand had been Clara’s. It settles on her shoulder for the second time and she flinches again, but Clara moves into her field of vision and offers her a small, conciliatory nod.</p><p>“Sorry,” Clara mumbles, her expression contrite. “Sorry, I didn’t think… I didn’t consider how you’d…”</p><p>“No,” the Doctor says thickly, feeling a rush of irritation towards her partner. “You didn’t. Sorry about…” she gestures hopelessly to the floor.</p><p>“It’s fine,” Clara says at once, shrugging as she speaks. “It doesn’t matter.”</p><p>“It <em>does. </em>All that mess…”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter.”</p><p>“It <em>does</em>,” the Doctor explodes, her temper taking her by surprise. “God, I just… will you just let me have a moment? Will you just let me try to make amends?”</p><p>They both know she doesn’t mean the jar. There’s a terse pause as their eyes meet, and then the Doctor looks away, crouching down and starting to try to sweep the glass into a pile with the hem of her sleeve. The sticky syrup from the cherries has oozed over everything, rendering the shattered remains stubbornly immovable, and after a few frustrated moments, the Doctor gives up on using her coat, instead reaching for the nearest shard of glass. Clara cries out in warning as her fingers close over it, and as she jumps at the sudden sound, the sharp point cuts into the ball of her thumb.</p><p>She swears in Gallifreyan as drops of her blood pepper the white-and-black chequerboard of the floor, and Clara immediately rushes forwards, fumbling through her pockets in a fruitless search for something to help. The Doctor doesn’t want help; doesn’t want interference; her irritation of seconds earlier wells up again, and she fights to keep her temper. She grits her teeth as she yanks the shard from her thumb, then lifts the digit to her mouth, tasting the sharp ferrous tang of her blood as Clara finally comes up with a ragged-looking tissue.</p><p>“Here,” Clara says softly, holding it out to her, but the Doctor shakes her head, taking a seat in the booth Clara had been kicking and keeping her thumb in her mouth. “Don’t be so bloody stubborn, it’s probably cleaner than your mouth.”</p><p>The Doctor raises her eyebrows, and Clara half-laughs.</p><p>“You’re probably right,” Clara acquiesces, twisting it between her fingers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think… I should have thought… I was fine. You know I was fine. Nothing happened; nobody bought me.”</p><p>“I’oh,” the Doctor mumbled around her thumb. “S’ill.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Clara says again, looking down at the shining, syrupy messy on the floor in front of them. “I should have… I’m sorry. I just… I trusted Kacper.”</p><p>“I’oh,” the Doctor says again, removing her thumb from her mouth and swearing under her breath as blood wells instantly along the uneven lines of the cut. “So did I.”</p><p>She shoves her thumb back in her mouth.</p><p>“Maybe we should do something,” Clara says slowly, her eyes lighting up with a wicked, mischievous glint. “You know....”</p><p>“No, wh’?” the Doctor manages, then sighs, taking her thumb out of her mouth, snatching the tissue that Clara is still holding, and wrapping her thumb in it tightly. “Sorry, no, I don’t know. What?”</p><p>“You know. To teach him a lesson.”</p><p>“Clara…”</p><p>“What? He hurt me; he scared you. He’s a tyrant who’s killed or sold thousands of his own people… it’d only be what he deserved. Come on, nothing lethal… just… oh, I don’t know. We could steal one of his dreadnoughts, or hotwire it and make it crash.”</p><p>“You said nothing lethal.”</p><p>“They’re only robots, the crew.”</p><p>“And what about the place where it would crash to the planet below? How would you control that? How do you know it wouldn’t land on a school, or a hospital? How would you stop innocent lives from being lost?”</p><p>“Fine, so we steal one.”</p><p>“And put it where?” the Doctor asks with incredulity. Blood is starting to seep through the tattered tissue around her thumb, but she ignores it. “The TARDISes might be large, but they’re not <em>that</em> large.”</p><p>“Isn’t there some… I don’t know, intergalactic multi-storey we could park it in?”</p><p>“No, and even if there were… Clara, we’re not doing it.”</p><p>“Why?” Clara’s tone is wheedling and niggly; she pouts as the Doctor looks over at her, folding her arms and adopting an expression which fully conveys to the Doctor that she’s not about to back down. “It’s nothing he doesn’t deserve, and nothing we couldn’t do. Between the two of us, I’m sure we could come up with something appropriately awful.”</p><p>“‘I’m giving you an order,’” the Doctor begins to quote tiredly, the words etched deep into her memory, alongside the resulting grief and anguish. “’You will not insult my memory. There will be no revenge. I will die, and no one else, here or anywhere, will suffer.’”</p><p>Clara blinks at her with bemusement, disconcerted by the words she had spoken before her death so long ago being recited back at her. “I meant specifically to me dying,” she clarifies, but she doesn’t sound entirely convincing. “Not… you know. More generalised revenge.”</p><p>“Revenge is never a good idea, Clara,” the Doctor says quietly. “And I think you know that, but why would you say the words? You know the dangers it could bring; the endless cycle of one-upmanship that a single act of retribution can spark. If we acted against Kacper, what would that bring us? A moment’s pleasure. A moment’s pleasure, while he plotted and schemed against us. And we’d spend an eternity looking over our shoulders. Eternity trapped in a vicious cycle.”</p><p>“So, we <em>could</em> commit lethal revenge.”</p><p>The Doctor simply stares at her, aghast, and a second later Clara scoffs, but there’s guilt in her eyes.</p><p>“That was a joke,” Clara elucidates, but the words don’t ring quite true. The dismissive little laugh had come too late; the words had been too sincere. “I don’t… we…”</p><p>“Who are you?” the Doctor asks, her tone weary. “I don’t think I know any more. You used to be Clara Oswald. You used to reject cruelty and cowardice. You influenced so much of the man I became with the words you spoke to me in that barn on Gallifrey; with the things you reminded me of, and what you empowered me to become. And now… now, who are you? Demanding revenge, suggesting murder? I don’t think I know any more.”</p><p>“Doctor, I…”</p><p>The Doctor gets to her feet, her blood now freely seeping through the tissue and running down her thumb and dripping onto the floor. “I’m going back to my ship. Don’t follow me.”</p><p>“But… you… we… your thumb…”</p><p>The Doctor ignores her, glass crunching and cherries squishing under her boots as she heads out of the diner and towards her own TARDIS. With each step, she remembers Clara’s face as she’d looked around the slave auction; the wide-eyed panic and terror in her expression; remembers the way that buyers had eyed her up like a piece of meat as she’d stood and trembled, the chains on her wrist held securely by the red-skinned alien that the Doctor had handed them to with the utmost reluctance. There had been a moment of eye contact between them and then she’d dipped her gaze, taking a final glance, as though to reassure herself, at the device she’d slipped to Clara in the chaos of the market, and then she’d had to turn and leave her there, alone and afraid.</p><p>“She’s fine,” she murmurs to herself, unlocking the door of her TARDIS and stepping inside with a heavy heart, holding her bleeding thumb in her other hand to avoid sullying the floor of the console room. “She’s fine; nobody hurt her.”</p><p>And yet the anxiety and guilt lingers; the thought of ‘what-if’ weighing on her like a physical presence. Clara might be functionally immortal but that doesn’t shield her from several fates worse than death, fates which play out behind the Doctor’s eyes each time she blinks, and which unspool in her consciousness even as she shakes her head to clear them. She shudders, taking slow, laboured steps towards the console, and the ship beeps at her with concern.</p><p>“I’m alright,” she reassures it, popping open a drawer under the console and extracting a length of gauze, which she binds around her thumb with a small hiss of pain. “And she’s alright. We just… disagreed.”</p><p>The ship beeps at her again, as though it knows she’s lying. It probably does.</p><p>“I’ll be alright,” the Doctor pats the console reassuringly. “I just… need a moment. Several moments. Need to stop thinking about what could have been.”</p><p>“You do, yes,” Clara says, stepping over the threshold and closing the doors behind her, and the Doctor jumps, turning to her face her and feeling her heartrate accelerate.</p><p>“I said not to-”</p><p>“Not to follow you, yes. And I ignored you.”</p><p>“I can see that.”</p><p>“I didn’t think you should be left alone, because I know this mood, and I know you ought not to be in here by yourself when you’re in it. Not when you’re mardy. Not when you’re brooding.”</p><p>“I…” the Doctor begins, then shakes her head, unsure how to even begin to explain. “It doesn’t matter.”</p><p>“I’m sorry for what I said,” Clara tells her, her voice small and full of contrition. “I was angry, and I was scared. You know I wouldn’t actually… you know I couldn’t… your ethos is what’s important to me. Making the right choices. Doing the right thing.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“I don’t like seeing you hurting,” Clara continues, looking up at the Doctor and meeting her gaze. “That frightens me, because you’re always alright, so if you’re not then… then it means something to me, and it scares me. I think I got… carried away by that fear. I’m sorry.”</p><p>“I know,” the Doctor holds out her good hand to Clara; a non-verbal invitation that Clara accepts. Their palms meet and some of the weight lifts from the Doctor’s shoulders. “I’m sorry too. Not least about the cherries.”</p><p>“Oh, they don’t matter,” Clara says dismissively, shaking her head. “What matters is you.”</p><p>“I’m alright,” the Doctor assures her, offering her a tremulous smile. “I just… I’m not going to forget that place in a hurry.”</p><p>“Nor am I.”</p><p>“And I don’t think Kacper of Rhyx is going to forget us, either.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“I sabotaged the power banks of the fleet before we left. Whole armada, grounded. Thousands of troops, all rusting away in their bays. The rest is down to the people, but I suspect the uprising will be in full swing by now.”</p><p>“You…”</p><p>“I wasn’t going to let him get away with that, Clara,” the Doctor tells her. “Not after what he made me do.”</p><p>“But you…”</p><p>“Rule forty-nine,” the Doctor offers her a tight smile. “The Doctor has a complex and ever-changing moral compass.”</p>
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